summary Eternal Life A New Vision Beyond Religion Beyond Theism Beyond Heaven and Hell

free download ☆ PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB ä John Shelby Spong free read Eternal Life A New Vision Beyond Religion Beyond Theism Beyond Heaven and Hell ð PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB Drawing on a lifetime of wisdom New York Times bestselling author and controversial religious leader John Shelby Spong con. For all you Spong fans who were beginning to grow frustrated at his vagueness this book tackles an important subject head on What are liberal Christians at least those in the Spong mold supposed to make of the Bible s promise of eternal lifeWe needn t depend upon the supernatural in order to grasp eternal life for all life is deeply linked Spong uotes Einstein s provocative claim to explain I feel myself so much a part of everything living that I am not the least concerned with the beginning or ending of the concrete existence of any one person in this eternal flow Spong wants us to embrace infinity to transcend time But he hopes for us to discover the eternal in a very practical way Eternity is within us it is what it means to be humanSpong writes The power of love flows through all forms of life but it ceases to be instinctual and comes to self consciousness only in human beings That power of love is also part of who God is for me This means that the deeply I am able to love the God becomes a part of me This is why no religion can in the last analysis ever really be about proper beliefs and proper practices Religion has to be about the enhancement of life through love You ve probably heard this before if you re a Spong fan but it doesn t hurt to be reminded Love is after all the key to finding life eternalBut what about reward Spong is uite happy to rid religion of both heaven and hell having never been a fan of either The fact is that if you and I live our lives motivated by our desire to gain paradise or to avoid eternal punishment then we have not escaped the basic self centeredness of life that is so natural to survival oriented self conscious creatures In other words eternal reward only gets in the way of the true Christian messageUplifting and timely this is a book worth reading twice I have

free download ☆ PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB ä John Shelby Spong

free download ☆ PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB ä John Shelby Spong free read Eternal Life A New Vision Beyond Religion Beyond Theism Beyond Heaven and Hell ð PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB About his lifelong struggle with the uestions of God and death he reveals how he ultimately came to believe in eternal li. If you are comfortable with your religious faith this isn t the book for you If you have always been troubled by things the church told you to believe or ways your religion told you to behave this is a thoughtful journey that explores looking at life by going through religion and coming out the other side There are enough parallels to my own life s path for it to speak to me If I ever still consider myself a Christian it is because of the writings of John Shelby Spong

free download ☆ PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB ä John Shelby Spong free read Eternal Life A New Vision Beyond Religion Beyond Theism Beyond Heaven and Hell ð PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB Tinues to challenge traditional Christian theology in Eternal Life A New Vision In this remarkable spiritual autobiography. I should really give ETERNAL LIFE A NEW VISION 2 stars but because it majorly enlightens me at this moment in life I give it 4Now this is the first of Bishop Spong s that I ve ever read and I can sense that it s definitely not his best and that he s probably expressed most of these ideas in his bajillion other works But ETERNAL LIFE is a great introduction to him because it s an easy to read interesting synthesis a spiritual autobiography combined with an interpretive spiritual biography of humanity Also it is very brief though often repetitive and he wrote it in retrospection at like age 78So Spong is pretty pretentious Somehow this did not deter me from liking him He s articulate earnest and unafraid he genuinely loves his readers and he s very passionate aboutJesusFirst he takes us on a highly personal tour of his own spiritual evolution I could totally identify with him even as someone who did not grow up with religion He put into words a lot of the things I ve been struggling with recently and pointed precisely to the reasons for them so that I was like OMG EXACTLY Now I can break free srslyLater Spong takes us through an overview of the history of the universe our evolution the development of religion and into the post modern post Christian Western world of the present Though oversimplified and probably not without errors and funky interpretations history science are areas of intense interest for him but certainly not areas of expertise it s a fascinating picture to contemplate I especially enjoyed his insight into the blessing burden of our self consciousness as a speciesHis relationship to the Bible is complicated and loving and unapologetically postmodern Something that I most strongly disagreed with is his belief that all religious metaphors symbols of the past are officially unfulfilling and should be left behind Personally I don t mind referring to God or the earth as a paternalmaternal figure because while it s a limited conception it is at least one facet of things that we can relate to as human beingsBasically Spong thinks we need to move beyond traditional religion which belongs to the childhood of our humanity Secularism is a necessary step and the next is to embrace a new kind of religion that is about oneness He redefines worship God and other religious concepts for a humanity that is realizing the blessing of its self consciousness instead of fleeing from its mortality I found myself pretty convinced by his overall thesis Obviously each individual should move through these stages at their own pace but societyculture as a whole can prepare for a shiftSpong now believes that God is the Ground of All Being and the universal consciousness He sort of jumped into this very suddenly in the narrative by talking about the mystics And his belief seems to be based in an intuitive subjective knowing I wish he d explained it better but it must be something that you have to experience for yourself so my new goal in life is to be a mystic lolOverall a small thought provoking book that I would recommend with my whole heart to critical thinkers and religious seekers who are feeling a little stuck and alone

• Paperback
• 288
• Eternal Life A New Vision Beyond Religion Beyond Theism Beyond Heaven and Hell
• John Shelby Spong
• English
• 03 June 2018
• 9780060778422